MTA Announces Rail Crossing Campaign After Metro-North Crash

A train passes through the intersection where an SUV was struck Feb. 3 by a Metro-North Railroad train in Valhalla, N.Y., killing six people.

The Associated Press

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced Wednesday a new safety awareness partnership for railroad crossings, in the wake of the deadly Metro-North Railroad Feb. 3 train crash in Westchester County.

The outreach effort will be coordinated with Operation Lifesaver, a national not-for-profit that has been run educational programs around railroad crossings since 1972, said Tom Prendergast, MTA’s chairman and chief executive. There are 334 grade crossings on the Long Island Rail Road and an additional 103 on Metro-North, according to the MTA.

Mr. Prendegast said that while he didn’t wish to blame motorists for train accidents, the MTA wanted “to raise the level of awareness, raise the level of sensitivity.”

During the safety committee meeting, board members discussed other potential safety measures, including weight sensors on the tracks to help signal train operators if a vehicle is in the way; cameras to monitor and enforce grade crossing violations; and tweaking the amount of time that gates are down at the crossings before the train passes through.

Board member Norman Brown asked whether the best solution might be to focus on eliminating crossings altogether.

“All the behavioral changes, all the gizmos, all the technologies you add to the system at great expense will not be as valid as the technology we know exists, which is grade separation,” Mr. Brown said.

Mr. Prendergast agreed that “a safe grade crossing is no grade crossing” but added that large-scale separation of grade crossings wasn’t economically feasible. Noting that one grade separation had cost $85 million, he said, “It can’t work everywhere…We don’t have enough money to do all of them.”